After reading through this entire website, my opinion is that this entire philosophy and ideology is completely contrary to the Gospel. It is contrary to the tenets of equal partnership, Christlike love, and looking beyond the outward appearance. It is contrary to the admonition to judge not unrighteously. It is an example of those who call good evil, and evil good.

In addition, the website uses so many logical fallacies that I don't even know where to start.

I would seriously recommend that you re-evaluate your outlook on women, life, dating, marriage, parenting, and any other topics that this website touches on, if you find yourself wholeheartedly agreeing with what has been said there.

If you attend BYU, I would suggest taking either Rel C 200 or SFL 200. Professor Carroll, in particular, is a very well-respected professor in both BYU and the secular community, and I could not recommend his class enough.

As in Board Question #89209, I think the ideologies presented in this article are poison. Here's the thing: what the author is describing is called "moral hazard." I do want to point out here that most of the situations the article painted as woman playing the system with drug and alcohol culture is blatant victim blaming, however, and definitely doesn't even qualify as moral hazard. Moral hazards show up in virtually every public policy, as people take advantage of the insurance afforded by the policy. If the government never enacted any policies with moral hazards, we would not have social security, worker's compensation, unemployment insurance, auto insurance, safety net policies, health insurance, welfare programs, debt forgiveness, the list goes on and on.

One of the implications of this is that if your hand somehow got chopped off while you were working, you could be laid off, and left alone to then pay for your medical bills, and somehow survive off of whatever money you'd saved up thus far. If you depended on the use of your hands to work, and so couldn't ever find another job, then you could very well just starve to death, and your previous work--responsible for incapacitating you in the first place--would be under no obligation to offer any aid to you or your family. Situations like the one I just described are commonly held to be undesirable and ultimately unjust, thus we have worker's compensation in spite of the fact some people will fake injuries to receive payouts.

It's true that there will probably be some women on the margin who use Title IX to unjustly accuse men--not because they're women, but because they're people, and that's what people do. Regardless, the government has decided this moral hazard is far outweighed by offering greater protection and justice to the women who are raped, and I most definitely agree with this conclusion.

What this article is suggesting is to abandon greater social justice because of a very, very small population that will take advantage of the law, which is, frankly, idiotic. It makes absolutely no logical sense, even without going into how the vast majority of its examples are totally false, and completely unsupported by any evidence (which Anne, Certainly does).

It talks about the problems created by the Title IX process in rape trials, like that men are assumed guilty until proven innocent, and that women at BYU should be investigated by the honor code office after reporting a rape so they realize there are consequences for their actions. However, isn't immediately investigating a woman's worthiness and adherence to the honor code when she reports that someone raped her assuming she's guilty until proven innocent? You can't abhor that for men and uphold it for women, because that, my friend, is a double standard. Yes, maybe we should change the way rape trials are conducted and rely more on proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the man in question did in fact rape someone. But we should also give women that same benefit of the doubt, rather than immediately jumping to, "Well what did she do to bring this upon herself?".

"Rape culture is another phenomena invented by Social Justice Warriors (SJW’s) to help women obtain 'sexual freedom'."

Rape culture as I understand it is the underlying culture that means that many rapists are never punished for what they have done. It also shifts the responsibility away from potential rapists ("don't rape people") to women ("don't do stuff to get yourself raped"). And as far as being upset that women are being blamed for being raped goes, that's a real problem, not some "invention" to get attention. Although there are definitely some situations that are riskier than others, and it may be wise to avoid them, the ultimate decision to actually rape or sexually assault someone lies with the person doing the raping. A woman cannot be responsible for a man putting his penis in her vagina against her will, because it's not her penis, and as such she cannot control it or be held responsible for what it does. Sorry if that was a little graphic, but I can't think of a more polite way to explain that rape is never the woman's fault. She may be in a certain circumstance where it's more likely that someone may do that to her, but ultimately she can't control if someone chooses to assault her or not.

"If fear in girls is completely removed, girls will no longer need to worry about hanging out with alpha bad boys that will get them in trouble."

There's that pesky rape culture we were talking about. To reiterate, it's not the woman's responsibility to not get raped, it's the man's responsibility to not rape her. Again, it's wise to avoid situations where there's a higher probability of being raped, but the thing is, most women are acutely aware of that. Most women I know avoid walking anywhere alone late at night, or if they do, they carry Mace or Tasers with them. Most women I know are very aware when they hear someone walking behind them at night, or in a sketchy area of town, and they speed up or switch to the opposite side of the street. Most women I personally know who have been sexually assaulted or raped (and you would be surprised by how many of my friends that applies to) are extremely cautious about what places they go to, or who they go with, and they're haunted by nightmares and flashbacks. Most women I know worry that one day they or someone they care about will become part of the statistic, "1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted at some point in their lives." So that fear the article mentions is a very real, very present part of women's lives, but it's not caused by the threat of an honor code investigation like the article implies, it's caused by the threat of being raped.

The article mentions how the Title IX office can suspend men from BYU for sexually harassing women, and complains about how sexual harassment is such an umbrella term that it's hard to pin down, and men can be punished for seemingly innocuous things like giving a girl some unwanted flowers. While I agree that on the surface that sounds pretty bad, I've attended several trainings with BYU's Title IX office, and let me tell you, it's not like they would kick someone out of BYU just because someone said, "Oh my gosh, this creep gave me flowers and I totally didn't want them." They actually investigate what's going on, and then make a level decision based on the evidence. They also are fair when it comes to women reporting men sexually harassing them, and men reporting women who are sexually harassing them. It sounds like the author is worried about something that might hypothetically happen, but as far as I know, nothing like that has actually happened.

Finally, nothing in the article actually substantiates the claim that giving women amnesty from the honor code office when they're sexually assaulted will lead to fewer women getting married. That's implied in the title of the article, and then it's never mentioned again until literally the last sentence when they suddenly throw it in there again. But if that's the big reveal they were trying to work up to, they did a really awful job, because literally nothing they talk about proves that claim.

-Alta

*I'm not saying that male rape isn't a problem, because it definitely is, but as the article seemed to focus on women being raped by men, that's where I'll focus, as well.

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